In the comments to her post about her son’s atheism, Dr. B writes:

I think that the argument that we should believe in god in order to make ourselves be good is really rather blasphemous. God ought to be an end, rather than a means, by definition.

She’s responding to a commenter who doubted the sincerity of a boy that young professing to be an atheist, but the context here is secondary. I’m more interested in the statement itself. I think the idea that God must be an end is motivated by an aversion to ulterior motives. There is, perhaps, something unsettling about acting as though God is real merely because it motivates us to behave in a socially responsible way. That would reduce God to merely a useful fiction. But that doesn’t mean there’s a problem with viewing God as a means to an end; there’s a problem with viewing God as the wrong means to an end.

Belief in God and Torah is, in fact, a means to an end, but to a far more loftly end: a life of holiness. Believing in God because we want to share in His holiness isn’t an ulterior motive. It’s the whole point.